Name:
Email:
Posted: April 16th, 2008 at 10:49am By: Rev. Rebecca Schlatter
On a recent retreat with people from my church, in small groups we reflected on where we see God most readily. Gazing out the window at Lake Tahoe, and surrounded by mountains and trees, several of our group mentioned seeing God in nature.
I wondered aloud why we so often find it easier to see God’s handiwork in a tree, than in other people. Our faith says that both are created by God — it’s called human “nature,” after all. Genesis tells us that God took extra care in creating human beings — in fact, God created humans in God’s own image. It’s laid out right there at the beginning of our story: see a person — see God’s “image.” So if that’s true, then where do we lose the connection between looking at another human, and seeing God?
A first theory from the group was that, unlike a tree, a person talks back. People do things we don’t like. They demand responses. They are messy. They have needs. They can hurt us, and often do. In contrast, trees just stand there, accepting all and demanding nothing. (Is that really the kind of relationship we want with people, deep down?) Perhaps we always struggle to see God in things that trouble us.
A second theory was that trees were somehow a more “pure” creation of God, which remained the way “God made them.” People, on the other hand — well, it was implied that we don’t stay “the way God made us” but rather become something different. (Is this why we say more often that we see God in babies or children? Does God’s image somehow rub off during the teenage years?)
We moved on quickly in our discussion without exploration, but the idea keeps bothering me. It sounds like a theology in which God just powered up creation like a wind-up toy, and then left it to run on its own devices. In contrast, nothing in my theology or experience says that God somehow abandoned me after my creation: “Here’s everything you’ll need for your lifetime — good luck to you.” And yet, despite faith, sometimes we live as if everything is up to us — as if we could somehow choose to “remain” in God’s image or not.
A term from Parker Palmer is helpful here: “functional atheism.” In his book, Let Your Life Speak, functional atheism is “the belief that ultimate responsibility for everything rests with us. This is the unconscious, unexamined conviction that if anything decent is going to happen here, we are the ones who must make it happen — a conviction held even by people who talk a good game about God.” We could see it as functional atheism when we ascribe all of people’s circumstances and development to their own ultimate responsibility, rather than ongoing creation in which God remains active — forming, reshaping, guiding, even carrying us.
We struggle to perceive God’s image mixed with things like weakness, rebellion, addiction, anger, depression, or illness. Perhaps we give up too easily. In our group discussion, were we wrong about the way God creates people, or more specifically, when and how often that creation takes place? Or were we wrong about people, overestimating our ability to create ourselves, and our potential to “create ourselves” far from God’s image? Could our theology or anthropology make sense of our mixture of divine creation and human messiness?
I hope so. I’d like to see God in human nature more readily, even in people who seem to have God’s image well-buried. Perhaps that desire means a move toward integrity between my real life and my theological life, which proclaims that God’s presence is revealed most powerfully in human community: “the body of Christ.”
Or maybe that desire is just practical, and even a bit selfish: I spend a lot more time surrounded by people than by trees. In the midst of so much human nature, it would be wonderful to live each day knowing oneself constantly, perpetually surrounded by God’s handiwork.
— — —
Rev. Rebecca Schlatter is an ordained minister in the Lutheran Church (ELCA) in Reno, Nevada. You can contact her at newhousesfromoldbricks@hotmail.com. © copyright 2008 by Rebecca Schlatter
Permalink
On a recent retreat with people from my church, in small groups we reflected on where we see God most readily. Gazing out the window at Lake Tahoe, and surrounded by mountains and trees, several of our group mentioned seeing God in nature.
I wondered aloud why we so often find it easier to see God’s handiwork in a tree, than in other people. Our faith says that both are created by God — it’s called human “nature,” after all. Genesis tells us that God took extra care in creating human beings — in fact, God created humans in God’s own image. It’s laid out right there at the beginning of our story: see a person — see God’s “image.” So if that’s true, then where do we lose the connection between looking at another human, and seeing God?
A first theory from the group was that, unlike a tree, a person talks back. People do things we don’t like. They demand responses. They are messy. They have needs. They can hurt us, and often do. In contrast, trees just stand there, accepting all and demanding nothing. (Is that really the kind of relationship we want with people, deep down?) Perhaps we always struggle to see God in things that trouble us.
A second theory was that trees were somehow a more “pure” creation of God, which remained the way “God made them.” People, on the other hand — well, it was implied that we don’t stay “the way God made us” but rather become something different. (Is this why we say more often that we see God in babies or children? Does God’s image somehow rub off during the teenage years?)
We moved on quickly in our discussion without exploration, but the idea keeps bothering me. It sounds like a theology in which God just powered up creation like a wind-up toy, and then left it to run on its own devices. In contrast, nothing in my theology or experience says that God somehow abandoned me after my creation: “Here’s everything you’ll need for your lifetime — good luck to you.” And yet, despite faith, sometimes we live as if everything is up to us — as if we could somehow choose to “remain” in God’s image or not.
A term from Parker Palmer is helpful here: “functional atheism.” In his book, Let Your Life Speak, functional atheism is “the belief that ultimate responsibility for everything rests with us. This is the unconscious, unexamined conviction that if anything decent is going to happen here, we are the ones who must make it happen — a conviction held even by people who talk a good game about God.” We could see it as functional atheism when we ascribe all of people’s circumstances and development to their own ultimate responsibility, rather than ongoing creation in which God remains active — forming, reshaping, guiding, even carrying us.
We struggle to perceive God’s image mixed with things like weakness, rebellion, addiction, anger, depression, or illness. Perhaps we give up too easily. In our group discussion, were we wrong about the way God creates people, or more specifically, when and how often that creation takes place? Or were we wrong about people, overestimating our ability to create ourselves, and our potential to “create ourselves” far from God’s image? Could our theology or anthropology make sense of our mixture of divine creation and human messiness?
I hope so. I’d like to see God in human nature more readily, even in people who seem to have God’s image well-buried. Perhaps that desire means a move toward integrity between my real life and my theological life, which proclaims that God’s presence is revealed most powerfully in human community: “the body of Christ.”
Or maybe that desire is just practical, and even a bit selfish: I spend a lot more time surrounded by people than by trees. In the midst of so much human nature, it would be wonderful to live each day knowing oneself constantly, perpetually surrounded by God’s handiwork.
— — —
Rev. Rebecca Schlatter is an ordained minister in the Lutheran Church (ELCA) in Reno, Nevada. You can contact her at newhousesfromoldbricks@hotmail.com. © copyright 2008 by Rebecca Schlatter
Permalink
Add your comments